Those Who Serve !
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Are They Pulling Their Weight, or Have They Been Ignored by the Associations and Employers as a Fruitful
Source of Publicity?
ARE employees in the road-transport industry pulling their weight in backing up their employers and associations, or are they sitting back, content to let their masters fight the increasingly bitter light against railway opposition and Government oppression? The leaders of the industry are continually expressing the view that we must educate the public as to the unfair tactics that are adopted by the railway companies in an effort to suppress road transport, and have accused them of attempting to put the road-transport house in order, whilst their own was in a state of chaos.
Does this allegation not apply also to our own case? Are not our leaders attempting to educate the public into the true facts of the road and rail controversy, before they have instructed their own employees in the methods of countering and demolishing railway arguments?
Employees' Apathy.
Road-transport employees themselves are steeped in apathy and are obviously practising the doctrine of " don't trouble trouble until trouble troubles you." Quite 50 per cent, of them do not realize that their work is being made increasingly difficult and that they are even in danger of losing their employment, because the industry in which they are engaged runs the risk of being suppressed by panic legislation, which has been set afoot by the railways.
Would it not have been a wiser policy for the road-transport associations to have published and distributed leaflets amongst employees, in which the true facts of the road-rail controversy were outlined, so that the workers could have advertised the industry on their own account, thereby adopting a practice similar to that of the railways? I have yet to meet a railway employee who is not primed . with arguments against the road-transport industry.
Free Publicity Available.
If the hundreds of thousands of drivers, conductors, clerks, etc., earning their livelihoods by road transport had been primed in a similar manner, the position would undoubtedly have been different to-day. I know many employees in the industry who express only bewilderment when asked such a question as, Is road transport subsidized? " They do not know any essential fact in connection with the case.
There is a wide field of free publicity for road transport in the correspondence columns of the provincial news-. papers, if individual employees care to take advantage of it. If one employee would break the ground in each district, and others stand ready to support him, if necessary, I consider that great service could be rendered.
A controversy which I recently created in a local daily newspaper on the subject of mall transport clearly illustrates the mariner in which employees can further the cause: • The series of letters commenced with one in which I pointed out the paralysing restrictions surrounding the industry, and, two days later, the newspaper published a reply from another correspondent, who refuted my claims.
On.the following day, another reader expressed his agreement with my views, whilst, four days later, a further letter was published, in which I answered the arguments of the dissenter. Additional criticism was forthcoming on the next day, whilst in the following issue a letter was published from my original critic, who continued to deride my statements. The controversy was concluded four days later by two letters championing the cause of road transport—one from myself and one from another supporter of the industry.
It will be noted that the arguments in favour of road transport won the• day. One may well imagine the favour-' able impression left in the minds • of readers who had followed the correspondence and had previously seen only the railway's view of the' road-rail controversy. Such a campaign, conducted throughout the country by road-transport employees, would doubtless further the interests of the industry.
There is another direction, recently mentioned in The Commercial Motor, in which employees could be utilized to great advantage. Shortly there will be a general election. Cannot something he done by the associations to select from all the prospective candidates men who are pro-road in their views—or, at least, not anti-road-land the industry circularized to the effect that a certain candidate should be supported, if members value their employment?
Now is the time to begin preparations for such a scheme. TRANSEX.